Claim of ‘conspiracy to overturn train’ turned out to be fake, game for night duty and promotion

The ‘conspiracy to overturn a train’ in Gujarat turned out to be completely fake. Three railway employees had hatched the conspiracy in the hope of promotion, reward and night duty. The police have arrested all three.

Sudhir Jha , Surat, LanguageTue, 24 Sep 2024 05:44 AM Share

The ‘conspiracy to overturn the train’ in Gujarat turned out to be completely fake. Three railway employees had hatched the conspiracy in the hope of promotion, reward and night duty. They had claimed to avert the accident. But when shocking revelations were made during the investigation, all three were arrested.

Surat Superintendent of Police (SP) Hotesh Joysar said the arrested employees have been identified as Subhash Poddar (39), Manish Mistry (28) and Shubham Jaiswal (26), who are posted as trackmen in the railway’s maintenance department. Poddar and his colleagues made the big claim while inspecting the track between Kosamba and Kim stations at 5.30 am on Saturday. They reported to higher authorities that ‘mischievous elements’ had removed elastic clips and two fishplates from one side of the track to derail the train. They also recorded and sent a video of this.

The police started the investigation by registering a case of criminal conspiracy under the Indian Justice Code (BNS) against unknown persons. The police found that a train had passed just moments before the video of the damaged track was sent. The police found that the time gap between the detection of the tampering and the passing of the train was very less. The police became suspicious of the claim of removing the elastic clips and fishplates in such a short time.

After this, the mobile phones of the three employees were checked. They had made several videos of the molestation between 2.56 am and 4.57 am. Mistry had also deleted the pictures taken from his mobile. It was found that the videos were sent to the officials at 5:30 am, but they were recorded much earlier.

When the police questioned the three of them thoroughly, they broke down and confessed to the crime. According to the police, the three accused said that they thought that they would be honored and get promotions. Apart from this, they would also be given night duty in the future, so that they could spend time with their families during the day. This idea came to Poddar’s mind and the three of them wanted to execute it together. Poddar was put on night duty during monsoon and now it was about to end. Actually, after night duty, one gets leave the next day.